bwagy

1,000,000 books sold

$25k/month

500 tonnes.

Numbers help provide a context and allows us to compare / contrast things.

Remember that and leverage it.

John Chow built his business off the back of showing people how to earn money off his blog.

Even once banned by google, he only grew, as people discussed the numbers.

Did you see how much John earned last month? its his highest month ever.

Share your numbers, especially the curious ones, with your customers.  It may be worth talking about.

Zero is increasingly more and more of a relevant number.

The cost of building a brand online? Zero.  Input time and thought.

The cost of creating a movie?  Zero.  Input time and thought.

The cost of building a business online? ….. you get the idea.

Since costs are zero, what is the differentiator?

Passion.

Passion for your problems.  Your niche.  Your customers.

As humans we like passion.

That’s the one thing we can not have zero of…..

As is the power of small we are all micro experts.

We hold expert knowledge within a small niche.

Much of it we’re not aware of as it is just a way of life, for example I’ve found Iam an micro expert in:

• Managing virtual teams across multiple countries, time zones and long time periods
• Twitter Evangelist: the art of using twitter
• Bootstrapped Marketing

These are just some, this isn’t a recent occurrence I suspect it has been like this for many years.

But now something has changed.

The value of this knowledge has changed.

Before it was handy to you and a few select people you ran into.

Now using the internet the global interest can be enough to build a market around.

An online tv show; a blog, a small book detailing your learnings, a series of dvds.

With this in mind you can really do what you love and make a few bucks at the same time.

We now have connectivity virtually 100% integrated into our lives.

Through wifi, 3g, broadband we can connect for the most part of our day.

We have seen the rise of I want Sandy, the personal assisant bot.

However I think this is just the start, how about:

• Sending a dm / txt of each item of food you consume, then get a weekly summary or calorie intake, spikes, drops, improvements.
• Same with exercise.
• Reminder services already exist (with Sandy) but how about people assistants, ie ‘can you ring me on the 30th to remind me to do my gst return’.
• Research, can you research Jesse James and give me a 2 minute rundown of him, in time for my meeting.  (Tremendously helpful for when meeting a new company or networking)
• Share all this with your friends / family.

This would be absolutely fantastic and be of huge huge value to small groups.

Project Management, running virtual organisations, charity groups.

This would be the step between basecamp and real life.

Absolute magic! Can we do it now? Yes we can.  Just need someone to do it for us…..

(btw is this the Twitter monetisation play? Possibly).

Right, I have some announcements,

• I will be speaking on a panel at the 2nd Digital Media Summit next March on Gen C.  More info here.  I will try to get video content to share with you.
• My blog will be syndicated onto GetFrank.co.nz once a fortnight under the Design & Inspiration section to share with their audience, am very stoked and proud to be selected.  My first post will be up soon.
• My book The Best Ideas are Free is coming out early next year, I will have the site up and pre-orders in the coming weeks (with a bonus for all those who pre-order)

Also you can subscribe to my blog via email if you wish below:

Otherwise rss and other options available here.

This is a term I learned during my uni years.

The concept is that in an academic argument you use others research & findings to back your own.

Essentially by standing on the shoulers of giants before us we leveraged our argument and made it that much stronger.

I like this metaphor and it is just as applicable in business.

Who do you have talking about you? or even better are you viewed as a giant? (such that people want to stand on your shoulders).

If not you should seek to stimulate this, how can I leverage myself / our business by standing on the shoulders of giants?

You’ll see organisations do it by showing their customers off, we work with so and so multinational or authors do it frequently by getting other great authors to write the introduction.

So how can you stand on the shoulders of giants to help you?

You need to be.

Especially if you’re operating on the edge, in a startup, paving a new path, or pushing to achieve your own goals.

There are no rules at the edge, you make them, and often there are many speed bumps or friction.

There are times when things go sour and it all falls apart, you’ve hit rock bottom.

No you haven’t.

This is just a part of the process of getting to where you need to go, you’re made of rubber, so you need to bounce back, harder, faster and higher than before.

Then keep at it.